14 IV. MENisPERMACE.E. [Chasmcmtheva 



discovering flowering specimens of this Order because of the small 

 size and usually green colour of the flowers, and on the difiiculty 

 of defining the species on account of their dioecious character ; he 

 also speaks of the great magnificence of the foliage of most of the 

 species, and of the large quantity and deep red or orange colour 

 of the fruit of several of them. Many species occur singly in the 

 primitive forests, like hermits ; their foliage mostly near the 

 summit of the trees, wdth their flowers and fruits on the naked 

 trunk or branches, mostly hidden in the densest thicket. Many 

 possess healing qualities in the roots, stems, and fruits. Almost 

 all have very tenacious stems, often 30 to 60 ft. in length, which 

 are employed by the negroes as ropes, so that in some districts 

 the species become rare or altogether disappear. 



1. CHASMANTHERA Hochst. ; Benth. & Hook. f. Gen. PI. i. p. 34. 



1. C. strigosa Welw. ms. in Herb. 



A robust shrub, dioecious ; stem ^ to | in. diam., at length, 

 climbing high with weak flexuous strigose -hispid branches and 

 branchlets, hanging down from trees as from a pillar ; leaves 

 orbicular, deeply auriculate-cordate at the base, palmately veined, 

 quite entire or vaguely sinuous, 3-lobed, mucronate by excurrence 

 of the veins (or retuse) at the apex of the leaf and of its vague 

 lobes, membranous-chartaceous, strigose-hispid, 4 to 9 in. diam. ; 

 petiole rather shorter than the blade, hispid. Flowers in elon- 

 gated slender hispidulous racemes. Male flowers about —^ in. 

 diam. before expansion, on short slender unequal pedicels ; in 

 little clusters 3 to 4 together in the axils of the filiform-subulate 

 bracts, which about equal the longer pedicels; racemes 1| to 

 2 ft. long; calyx 6-sepalous, in two series; the outer 3 narrow, 

 sub-herbaceous, pilose-hispid outside, with golden-tawny hairs, the 

 inner 3 broad, imbricated, subpetaloid, hispid along the middle of 

 the back, obtuse, hooded at the apex and bearded with elongated 

 golden hairs ; petals 6, waxy-fleshy, greenish yellow, rather smaller 

 than the interior sepals, all concave, glabrous, obtuse ; stamens 6, 

 central, united in a column, half way or nearly up to the insertion 

 of the anthers, glabrous ; anthers short, yellow, 2-celled, dehiscing 

 longitudinally (vertically), cells opposite not confluent ; ovary 

 altogether deficient. Female flowers in shorter racemes than the 

 male ; pedicels solitary, firmer ; calyx and corolla as in the male 

 flowers, but ^ larger in all parts ; staminodes 6, free, without 

 anthers ; carpels 3, obliquely ovoid, rather compressed, glabrous, 

 placed on a short fleshy gynophore, reddish brown, free at the 

 base, united at the apex by the base of the styles ; styles short, 

 straight ; stigmas bifid, reflexed ; lobes more or less subulate, all 

 directed outwards. 



GoLUNGO Alto. — Sporadic in the denser primitive woods, near the 

 streams Delambra and Quiapoza, Sobato de Mussengue and Sobato da 

 Bumbosa ; with male flowers at the beginning of Nov. 1855, with 

 female flowers in the middle of Nov. 1855, with fruit in May 1856 

 (in the British Museum ^ only). No. 2326. 



